<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>my heart was wild in me by TolkienGirl</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28654365">my heart was wild in me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl'>TolkienGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Gen, I must have stood outside your dorm for hours...</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 14:14:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,657</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28654365</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Life of a hunter, and all that. There was no one else near this overlook; no cars passing on the stretch of highway nearby. He’d driven half an hour past the gas station before stopping. The mini-mart and lonely pumps had looked like the last place on earth, and he might have believed that, except he’d seen the ramshackle edges of the living world before.</p><p>He rubbed his eyes. Then he got back in the car and kept driving.</p><p>The closer he got to Sam, the worse it was.</p><p>[Dean heads for California to get Sam]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester &amp; John Winchester, Dean Winchester &amp; Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>my heart was wild in me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>'then I loved you. then I came after you. then I took apart our childhood and told you I was glad you remembered me. then I walked by the water’s edge and thought about the shores I’d known without thinking, at the time, that there was any need to keep them close.'</p><p>- the old year</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Shouldn’t take me too long,” Dad said. “Week at most.” He’d already filled the truck up, monster of a thing he got a year ago. Sight of it always set Dean’s teeth a little on edge, no reason.</p><p>He just couldn’t get comfortable with it, couldn’t get to know it. Wasn’t the same.</p><p>“Jericho, huh?” said Dean, ineloquent as he always was when a parting of ways was imminent. Not that he was comparing this to anything. He’d given up on such miserable thought-trails long ago. He finished his eggs (a little runny, but it didn’t do to complain) and took a swig of the coffee.</p><p>It was good diner coffee, at least. Black as a moonless night, and so bitter it tasted half-burnt.</p><p>So: scratch that. Not <em>good</em>, exactly. Just the way he liked it.</p><p>“Jericho,” said Dad. “I have a couple ideas already.” He’d finished his coffee, ordered a refill, and now he was hunting for change in his pockets. It was the last diner meal they’d share for a while, and it was all but over. “You let me know how this voodoo thing wraps up.”</p><p>“I’m almost done finding the dolls,” said Dean. “Nasty-ass things. Buried under magnolia bushes. Pink ones.”</p><p>Dad cracked a smile. “You a florist now, son?”</p><p>“Hah. Funny.”</p><p>“So. Why pink ones?”</p><p>Last meal, last conversation. Dad showing interest in the way he did, chasing a lead. Dean leaned into that. Not physically. Just—took as much time as he thought was safe to, answering. “Pink magnolias mean youth. The dolls are drawing on that to cause this weird premature aging phenomenon. Witch is dead—” Dean had ganked her—“But half a dozen people are still turning crepey.”</p><p>“You said she was two hundred years old?” Dad found a few quarters. He’d been dealing with a Rugaru in Pensacola. He wasn’t up-to-date on Dean’s world anymore, which was still something that Dean, at least, was getting used to.</p><p>“Yep. She’d been drawing life force off of these folks.” Dean takes a bite of beignet. That was good, too, like the coffee. Whoever’d been on egg duty had seriously dropped the ball. “Should be over soon.”</p><p>Dad put bills down. When he was ready to go, he could be out of a place in thirty seconds flat. He had his jacket over his arm. Rapped his knuckles on the table.</p><p>“Take care of yourself, Dean.”</p><p>Then he was gone.</p><p> </p><p>The week went by. The dolls were all burned—the victims who were only halfway to withering recovered. Dean did a little sightseeing, but his heart wasn’t it. Dad didn’t come back the seventh day. Or the eighth.</p><p>He wasn’t picking up his phone.</p><p>Thing about Dad, about—well, about Winchester men who weren’t Dean—was that he (they) played certain cards close to the vest and you missed that in the middle of dealing with all the head-on bullshit. No disrespect meant, or anything. Just…Dad was clear about what he wanted, when he wanted it, and where you (or anyone) had screwed up. There was no mistaking him.</p><p>No mistaking him, except that Dean didn’t know if he’d planned to stay gone, this time.</p><p>
  <em>He wouldn’t.</em>
</p><p>But he’d said that to himself before, too, and not just about Dad.</p><p>He went to a bar on the tenth day, found he wasn’t in the mood for booze or babes after he was a couple beers in. Went for a walk, and took a long hard look at reality.</p><p>He needed to get out of his own way, stop assuming Dad was abandoning him. He wasn’t a kid anymore. It didn’t work like that. The real possibility, the yawning canyon between him and his usual crap-but-bearable life, was that Dad was in trouble.</p><p>Dean didn’t bother with a hotel. He sobered up, drove until his eyes were falling shut, then slumped over on the seat at a truck-stop in West Texas.</p><p>
  <em>Jericho, California.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>California.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sam.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>He needed Sam.</p><p> </p><p>In the light of day, it seemed stupid again. He stopped at a gas station. Coffee, snack crackers, and an apple, of all things, because his mouth was sour.</p><p>The apple was bruised, so half of it went to the squirrels, or whatever was running around a Texas park in late fall.</p><p>“You’re better than this, Winchester,” he said, to the open air. As soon as the words were spoken, he was embarrassed for himself. Who did he think he was, lying out loud like he was putting on a show for the sun and sky? It <em>was</em> a lie, after all. He wasn’t better than this, or anything. He was the bottom of the barrel, scraped by the needy days of the week.</p><p>Life of a hunter, and all that. There was no one else near this overlook; no cars passing on the stretch of highway nearby. He’d driven half an hour past the gas station before stopping. The mini-mart and lonely pumps had looked like the last place on earth, and he might have believed that, except he’d seen the ramshackle edges of the living world before.</p><p>He rubbed his eyes. Then he got back in the car and kept driving.</p><p> </p><p>The closer he got to Sam, the worse it was. The nagging urge to flip through memories like the photo albums they’d never had. Did he remember Sam? Could he call his voice to mind without pulling the sad stunt he’d tried the first few months, calling voicemail? (Sam never picked up, except for once, two years ago—but Dean wasn’t thinking about <em>that</em>.)</p><p>Would the sasquatch freak have gotten taller? Would he still have the same shitty taste in thrift-store shirts?</p><p>Hell, maybe Dean was lowballing him. Maybe Sam had some highfalutin’ campus job now. Maybe he didn’t need to shop at thrift stores.</p><p>Maybe everything they’d shared was—</p><p>Dean floored the gas, begging speed to give him courage.</p><p>It had worked for Keanu.</p><p> </p><p>Palo Alto was still fifteen hours out. All the desert miles of Arizona, SoCal…they were just the build-up. The sun-baked anticipation of coastal water, feeling farther away than the stars, but, in reality, just a few leg cramps, piss-breaks, and sunsets away. The closer Dean got to California, the more he knew the scenery. ‘Course he did. They used to check up on Sam, him and Dad, though never at the same time. They’d find a hunt in the Bay Area and then they’d disappear on each other. Not like Dad disappearing this time. Just a day here or there. No questions asked or answered, afterwards.</p><p>Dean had kept his mouth shut for years, not pressing on <em>what do we live for?</em> even though that was supposed to be the roadmap to end all roadmaps. <em>He’d</em> always lived for Sam, and not just because Dad had asked him too.</p><p>Sam had shrugged that desperate focus off like a too-small coat.</p><p> </p><p>It was evening when he arrived in Palo Alto. Dean hadn’t been in town for a long while, but he knew Sam’s address (always knew that) and found the hunched residential row of Stanford off-campus housing without trouble.</p><p>Parked a couple blocks away. Sat in the car, frozen.</p><p>An hour went by. Evening was fading fast; the days were getting shorter. Not so great for hunting, but a lot of their hunts happened in the fall and wintertime. Lots of old and new feasts…not just Halloween. Solstice shit. Brought the crazies out of the ground.</p><p>“Come on, Dean,” he muttered. His voice sounded weird. He hadn’t talked to anybody, outside a few grunts to the gas-station clerks, in days.</p><p>He wanted to talk to Sam.</p><p>He was terrified of talking to Sam.</p><p>Sam had that uncanny gaze, different from Dean, more like Dad but—but not actually like Dad at all. It wasn’t a drill sergeant stare, the <em>I-know-better-than-you</em>, the <em>get-your-ass-moving-before-I-do-it-for-you</em>. It was…it was a <em>challenge</em>, Sam’s stare. <em>Why</em> had been his first word, after <em>Dee</em>.</p><p><em>Why</em>, Dean could ask, <em>did you leave me</em>?</p><p>But it didn’t work both ways.</p><p>Sam wasn’t afraid of questions turned back on him. He’d jump to meet them. He’d be happy to explain himself, to draw lines in the sand. Hell, Sam would be the ocean, and Dean the shore—one stretching so far beyond the other. Shores only existed to meet the water. The water made them. The water didn’t need—</p><p> </p><p>“You’re out of your gourd,” said Dean, to himself.</p><p>He climbed out of the car and shuffled up the street. It was fully dark now. He paced the sidewalk. Sam’s apartment loomed. Nothing special about it. The lights were off. Maybe Sam wasn’t home.</p><p>It was Halloween night. Music and chatter, sometimes outright shrieks, all blurred by distance. The house next to Sam’s had people in it. Looked alive.</p><p>Dean went back to the car.</p><p> </p><p>Back and forth, until it was after midnight. He’d retreat to Baby, practically admitting defeat. Rest his legs, then head up the street again. Finally he told himself that the next time he went back to the car would be his last. If he turned tail again, he would just leave, and Sam would never know he was even here. He could keep aiming for Jericho, link up with Dad…if Dad was OK.</p><p>(But what would it be like, alone in California, barred from his family on both sides?)</p><p> </p><p>Dean had driven Sam to that bus-stop, four years ago. Dean had wished him luck when Dad couldn’t, sent him with salt and blessed beads and holy water when Dad couldn’t, let him go when Dad couldn’t.</p><p>It wouldn’t be letting go, this time, if Dean left. It would be running.</p><p>(That was what he told himself.)</p><p> </p><p>Feet planted, feet moving. He started walking, walking fast and quiet. Not towards the car—towards the window.</p><p> </p><p>You didn’t come to California if you weren’t going to go all the way.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"I must have stood outside your dorm for hours...because I didn't... I didn't know what... What you would say. I thought you'd tell me to... to get lost or get dead. And I don't know what I would've done... if I didn't have you. 'Cause I was so scared. I was scared, 'cause when it all came down to it, it was always you and me. It's always been you... and me."</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>